Users whitelist only four notification categories: someone they know did something involving them, a thing they explicitly set up, a transaction they're expecting, and a time-critical alert from a system they trust.
Everything else — feature announcements, recommendations, streaks, re-engagement, promos — gets muted within two weeks.
Users pattern-match to category, not copy. Better push copy optimizes the wrong variable.
Per-category in-app consent (not one system prompt) moved opt-in from 41% to 73% and dropped 30-day mute rate from 34% to 9% in one test.
Over the last six weeks I interviewed 60 people about their phone's notification settings. I asked each to open Settings → Notifications, scroll through every app, and tell me the story behind why each one was on, off, or set to silent delivery.
